Making Affirmations Work

To begin to know the secret power within ourselves and our own ability to change our lives with positive affirmations let's begin to explore the world of personal development with one of the industries most famous writers...

Napoleon Hill and his book "Think and Grow Rich."

I have personally read this book several times and my copy has underlining, highlights and notes galore in the margins. It would seem that every time I read it, there is wisdom that reveals itself to me that I had previously overlooked.

You can't possibly know all there is to know by simply reading something once and then putting it aside. To get all there is to get out of personal development and the study of it's principles one must dedicate themselves to a daily habit of study and reflection.

Napoleon Hill mentions that there is a secret contained within the pages of his book "Think and Grow Rich" which if you can find it and harness it you can have all that you ever desired and even more. So what exactly is that secret?

The answer was really quite simple:

Sit down, decide what you really want, write it down on a card, carry that card with you and read it to yourself as often as possible every day.

As with all principles in the universe, most are really quite simple to look at and see but the applicaion isn't always so easy. In fact most are simple but not easy. If this were not the case then anybody could simply write down on a piece of paper what they want and read it a few times a day and it would suddenly appear. We all know this is not the case, so what else is necessary to make ths secret work for us in our lives?

You must apply yourself to the understanding of the principles you seek to use by consistantly studying them. By doing this you will evoke a process where faith based study will begin to form a belief in the things you are learning and as your belief grows so will your understanding and ability to put these principles into your own words and meaning for you in your own life.

This is a critical part of the process. Just saying something from rote memory with no emotion or meaning to yourself is worthless and so it is with most peoples affirmations. They write down their goals and repeat them outloud, somethimes for a few weeks, with little or no feeling and then they quit. No wonder it doesn't work for them, they're missing the point.

Truth be know that most of us will write down or goals and when we make them huge and seemingly unobtainable, most of us dont really believe we can achieve them. This is the natural point of beginning for any worthy goal and it is this state of disbelief that we must alter and transform into belief in order for this principle to work for us and our goals to manifest.

Napoleon Hill wrote:

"There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it." (in the chapter on Desire) "No one is ready for a thing until they believe they can acquire it."

Most of us aren't ready for the good we desire I know I wasn't when I started down the path of personal development.

Furthermore Hill wrote:

"The state of mind must be belief and not meer hope or wish... open mindeness is essential to belief... closed minds do not inspire faith, courage or belief."

Our belief systems are based on what we have known from our past to be true and achieving new higher levels of achievement is outside of those prevously held beliefs.

We have within ourselves the ability to develop the skill of achievement by learning to develop our beliefs beyond what our common senses or conventional wisdom tells us is true.

When we study personal development we will learn to re-evaluate thigs by coming to know the meaning and purpose these principles have and as we do, we will begin to re-evaluate who we are and what we can do. In fact that is exactly what you are doing right now.

Open your mind up to new ideas and the secret within the secret will be found within this understanding...open mindedness is essential to creating new beliefs.

You have to start to believe you can achieve your goals or the application of affirmation is nearly worthless which is why most people have never made it work.

Hill wrote:

"No more effort is required in order to aim high in life to demand abundance and prosperity than is required to seek misery and poverty."

Furthermore;

"Your subconsiuos mind recognizes and acts only upon thoughts which have been well mixed with emotion and feeling...this is a fact of such importance as to warrant repetition in practically every chapter... because the lack of understandingof this is the main reason the majority of people who try to apply these principles of auto suggestion get no desireabl results."

Start to mix your goals and affirmations of them with emotion and visualize yourself as though you have actually acheived the results you seek to create. I have personally used mediatation with a great amount of success in assisting me in getting into a state of mind where this has actually been possible for me to do. Other people I know can just close their eyes and start imagining but I needed a little extra help to get past the road blocks of practicality that my past conditioning had set up in front of me.

"Start where you are right now and give it everyhting you've got... you dont have to know where it is coming from."

This is so important as well and I call it taking inspired action. Rarely is there an individual who has been gifted with the ability to sit down and draw up a list of steps necessary to acheive a goal and get half of it right. From my own experience I discovered   I couldn't even get the first few steps right so I found that the actions I was taking needed to be inspired by something within myself (because I continuedto study every day) which is where meditation came into the picture. Some of you are presently doing it but you call it prayer. By any name it is the same thing which involves getting very quiet and calming the noise in your head until there are gaps inbetween the thoughts. It is in these gaps that the answers to your questions lie unheard and undetected due to the din of your conventional wisdom and thinking.

With meditation I was able to quiet that noise and reveal the inspired thoughts that formed the basis of my actions. If I can do it you can too.

Taking massive action, especially when the actions are based on the intuitive inspiration from within is essential in giving life to the creation of your goals. You are training your mind to operate on a different frequency and by changing that frequency, everything in your world will begin to change. Money will begin to take on a meaning that is totally different than you ever imagined it would have.

Napoleon Hill spent his entire lifetime writing this book and he interviewed and studied over 500 people durring the Great Depression and he found a golden thread running through their lives and he wrote this book to assist you in undestanding how you too can use this golden thread to make changes in your own life.

As you start studying these principles and playing with them in your life you will begin to believe they can assist you in your journey.

Start allowing yourself to get emotionally involved with your affirmations and goals and live the part of the person who already has them and give everything into what you've got with where you are.

With the consistant daily application these principles you are raising your own level of conscious awareness. Thoughts and things will begin to come to you in strange ways. Make up your mind right now that you are going to change your life and realise that no matter how good it gets it can always get better. Study this material and the more you study the more you will believe in yourself because you begin to understand yourself.

Its the simple little things that you do that you do everyday that will make the most difference in your life.